Tag Archives: TV

Today a nice little job over in Long Bennington in Lincolnshire for our client who works in the high class sound system and TV industry for Bang and Olufsen. He certainly knows quality when he sees it and he was very satisfied with our workmanship in making his pool table play like new again.

Re-rubber the cushions on site with good black rubber after removing the old hard pink red rubber. The table being a thinline Supreme table 7×4 ft in cherry finish. One of the cushions was as hard as rock, no bounce at all, yet the other 5 were good. But it is always best to re-rubber the whole 6 cushions. Doing just one is false economy as the others are not far behind in going rock hard too.

Below the Pool table after strip down of cushions.
Note my cardboard template far right on the next photo, that I made of the cushion pocket angles before removing the old rubber. A simple job of then using this to trace around the exact angle onto the new rubber as Heywood Supreme pool factory had supplied from new.

The last photo of the finished table. The cloth of choice by our client was the upgraded Strachan 6811 pool cloth. It has a finer nap than the strachan 777 and much better for speed of ball over the cloth too.

This week I have been working on seven 7ft UK Winner Supreme pool tables and four 9 ball American Sam K steel 9ft tables. These 9ft K steels are a little different to other pool tables and here are a few photos of the tables during strip down and the finished work.

Hunters Bar in Grantham, Lincolnshire, is one of the better run clubs which invests in a regular recover and maintenance program so that the pool tables are always in good condition to play on. They have a regular client base, 7 UK pool tables and 4 American 9ft pool tables plus upstairs 6 full size snooker tables, two bars, food, TV and music. It’s a great club to go to for cue sports in Grantham..

Every staple was removed from these tables. We did not recover over old staples, thus prolonging the life of the cushion wood and the slate lining.

Finished tables ready for another season of use.

We removed every staple from the cushions and the bed cloth lining when stripping the table down, this prolongs the lifespan of the cushion and slate lining wood. There’s nothing worse than having to strip 3 or even 4 sets of staples out of pool tables that other fitters have left in for speed work, rather than doing the job correctly in the first place.

I recover all tables that I work on with the intention that it will be me who strips it down next time. I use 6mm staples that come out easily rather than use a compressor and fire 10 to 12 mm staples in that you have to dig out of the wood. This is why so many firms that use these compressors leave their staples in recover after recover.

Today I have recovered a very nice light oak Riley Aristocrat. This table is used by many of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire’s top players. The table can only be described as mint condition and is a joy to work on.

STEVE B’s mint Riley Aristocrat in OAK , a very nice table to work on.

After I recoverd the table in 6811 TOURNAMENT cloth by STRACHAN, I received the following text on my phone from the happy owner:

WELL HAPPY. HAD A 64 BREAK IN MY 2ND FRAME!
4TH HIGHEST BREAK EVER

This table will only get better the more it is played on. It was rerubbered last year with Northern rubber and the new cloth will after a while speed up. When a new cloth is fitted to a table it is at it’s slowest as the nap is at full length and the cushions are restricted by tight cloth being just applied to the cushions. When the cushion cloth slackens off, the rubber will be free to rebound the ball at a faster pace. This will take around 2 to 3 weeks of play.

The old cloth had a baulk line marked out in white tippex. Although this looks good as the TV tables have this, it is only for the camera’s to pick up on TV. By using a soft lead black pencil, the baulk line will fade. In 6 months to a year the cloth can be restretched and the old black lead pencil line can be removed with acetone, without the fear of having two white lines, as the tippex is very hard to get off a cloth once it has been put on.

I always recommend the black pencil baulk line over the white tippex pen, but it is down to the customer what they require and I will put on whatever they want.